Part I of the Leisure War: A Reason to Die

Sonny Spica, the rash protégé of St. Louis Outfit boss Tony Giordano, was a marked man. Nick Civella in Kansas City wanted him dead and so did Ray Flynn, the most violent labor racketeer in St. Louis. The car bomb that killed Spica in 1979 ignited St. Louis' infamous "Leisure Wars."

"You got a man we want. Either youtake care of him or send him to us." - Nick Civella

John Paul "Sonny" Spica was walking on the edge. By late October, 1979, it was inevitable that his life would end violently. It just was a question of when, how and by whom.

Spica was wedged between two inexorable forces of death. On one side was the Kansas City Mafia, which demanded his execution for violating sacred mob protocol. On the other was the most dangerous, devious labor racketeer in St. Louis and a gang of cutthroat hoodlums who settled their disputes with bullets, bombs and mayhem. Spica stood in their way and he had made unpardonable threats.

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With the purpose of writing about true crime in an authoritative, fact-based manner, veteran journalists J. J. Maloney and J. Patrick O’Connor launched Crime Magazine in November of 1998.

Their goal was to cover all aspects of true crime: from organized crime to serial killers, from capital punishment to prisons, from historical crimes to celebrity crime, from assassinations to government corruption, from justice issues to innocent cases, from crime films to books about crime. Read More